Strategus for [true] dummies : A real tutorial?

[Akavirius]

Hello.

I am looking for some basic infos about Strategus gameplay, because all i can see in the "Strategus for noobs" threads is for players that are experienced and have played previous versions of Strategus.

So i made a hero, i am now near Reyvadin. What now? I looked at and read all the tabs in "Strategus". I see that i have 100 troops, but nothing in inventory, this mean naked army?
Then i "entered" Ulburban. What can i do now?
Then i decided to attack a random "100 troops" guy (I am Tanit), just to see that i am now locked for 24 hours.
So tomorrow at 1pm, what will happen? 200 naked guys fighting in the snow?

Thank you.
;)

[Algarn]

Hello.

I am looking for some basic infos about Strategus gameplay, because all i can see in the "Strategus for noobs" threads is for players that are experienced and have played previous versions of Strategus.

So i made a hero, i am now near Reyvadin. What now? I looked at and read all the tabs in "Strategus". I see that i have 100 troops, but nothing in inventory, this mean naked army?
Then i "entered" Ulburban. What can i do now?
Then i decided to attack a random "100 troops" guy (I am Tanit), just to see that i am now locked for 24 hours.
So tomorrow at 1pm, what will happen? 200 naked guys fighting in the snow?

Thank you.
;)

Well, as there is no thread to explain you what the current strat is, I will tell you the really basic things you must know. I must have forgot some things, feel free to ask, and maybe I will be able to answer.

First of all, the currency is the silver, I don't remember well how you get it, but I believe you gotta wait, without the troop cap equal to 100. Then, you can buy goods, from a price varrying from 5 and 25 gold, the goods you buy can get you even more money if you sell them far from where you bought then. When you got something around 500k silver (after a lot of trading) , you gotta buy equipment. When you stand into a location, you can buy stuff, which can be bad or good (-2 to +3), depending of the locations (I advice you to go in towns to get good equipment with discount). Then, the battles are either siege, raid or regular battles. Raid = siege against army stationned into the village, if you win the raid, you win also the armors, weapons, horses, etc ... but not the gold/goods (as far I remember). Siege and battles are what they are in normal gamemodes, but the thing is the battle is more like a team deathmatch, where you do respawn either on flags (blue or red), and the siege is also a TDM, but that happens on a castle map. To win a battle, you have to kill everyone in front of you (tickets are seen as men), or take all the flags, with everyone dead on the opposite team. Another thing, the crime rate is the chance to lose a tick and gold per minute, don't stay into a village with more than 10% crime rate, or you will regret it. If you really have to sell something, stay outside of the location, and sell it when you can actually control your dot directly, so, you won't lose troops/gold from crime.

And to answer your question, yes and no. As the attacker, you have to get some gear to attack a dot on the map, so, you will be naked. On another side, if the defender is "unarmed", he will automatically get free peasant gear (low tier items). But if you want to win this battle, there is a posssibility to do that if there's no one on the defender side, so you can join, take all the flags, and win the battle. After that, you'll get damaged equipment you will have to sell, or repair (selling is far better), and the goods (I didn't mentionned you can see the selling bonus from distance below the good icon). The ennemy will keep the silver.
 

But really dude, if you wanted to play strat, you had to be a year back then. This strat is somehow completely dead when it comes to play as a "hero" (circulating on the map), the only way to get something from it is to fight as a mercenary, by applying into a roster when a good battle comes.

[Bryggan]

One correction- when you attack an unarmed army you don't loot any peasant gear.

And I don't think its too late to start strat.  Raise your troop cap up, then move your guy to a fief with a low goods price, buy 100 or so goods and travel about 30 km to get your distance bonus- you'll see it in your inventory under your goods.  It starts at -50%, and once you hit 300-350% find a fief with a high goods price and sell it.  Oh, and message the fief owners before you buy or sell anything.  They might not want you buying there.

Each fief has SD, which represents the amount of transactions that can be made there.  So if you want to buy or sell say two hundred goods, the SD has to be over 200.  But quite often a faction will want to use it all themselves for their own caravans, and will attack you if you try to enter.  So message first, and if they don't let you trade there, they'll usually advise you where you can trade.

As you start making money, keep raising your troop cap so you can carry more goods.  At this point your men are more like porters than soldiers.  But once you get to the point where you can carry 500 or so goods, you will become a tempting target and someone will think its worth fighting you in your peasant gear to rob you.  So start buying gear for your men.  WARNING: once you buy any sort of weapon, you will no longer get free peasant gear if you're attacked.  So when you are ready to equip, make sure you have enough stuff to arm most of your army.

After that, just keep trading and raising your troop cap and equipping them, and eventually (which will feel like forever, but count on a month) you'll have an attack worthy army.  At first you can attack smaller independent traders for fun and profit, then once you get big and bad ass, you might want to ally yourself with some faction.  This will get you roster support and a little back up in case you want to steal a fief from some other faction.

When you attack, the battle takes place 24 hours later (unless there's another battle scheduled, then it will take place right after that battle).  This gives you time to get your roster together.  Just look on your character page and hit 'battles', and it will show a tab to 'manage' your battle.  Hit 'briefing' to write your propaganda piece that will inspire people to fight for you, and 'mercenaries' to hire people.

To be an effective commander you'll need a teamspeak channel, and just keep repeating, 'stick together guys', 'doing good guys', and 'too much red, guys' or 'nice green, guys' randomly.